Someday, maybe
by HoshisamaValmor
Summary: Sometimes, more of the same is simply too much.


Warnings: mentions of rape, self-blame, guilt and hatred. Ash is 16 here, so he is a child, which adds up to the whole thing.

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Ash expected the erratic and familiar comotion of the night city behind him to vanish and drown as he entered his apartament, but it didn't. The door and thick walls he had ensured to have in his apartment for his and Griffin's sake totally blocked the voices from the outside, so he only heard them the second the door moved an inch, and all the exhaustion and ache was replaced by adrenaline as he pulled out his gun. He then recognized the voices, and instead a flash of anger rushed through him.

He banged the door shut behind him and immediately Skipper and Shorter startled up, turning their faces and smiling widely.

"Oh, Ash!" Skipper greeted him. "You're finally back! We're-"

"What the fuck are you doing here?" he cut, looking at Shorter but refering to both of them.

Shorter had been smiling too, and he took a couple of seconds longer than Skipper, always much more perceptive than the older teen, to note the frightening edge on Ash's voice and how different the expression on his face was.

"A-Ash, you took longer than you said you-" he boy tried to start, but Ash didn't care. He couldn't do this, he couldn't see anyone, not now, they had no right to be here.

"Get out."

"Whoa, what's wrong?" Shorter tried,_ and why the fuck was he here?!_ He wasn't supposed to be here, in his apartament, where his brother was! "You can put the gun down, it's just us. We-"

"I said get out!"

"Ash-" Skipper tried again, but this time he was cut by the loud banging of the gun flying and hitting the ground harshly, spinning like crazy and making both him and Shorter jump and yelp.

"Whoa, Ash! What the fuck! What's wrong with you?! Calm down!"

"GET OUT!"

Shorter continued to yell back but Skipper grabbed at his arm and pulled him forward, his eyes wide and guilty and scared and Ash couldn't do this now, he couldn't look at him, couldn't feel guilty for scaring him like that, he couldn't look at anyone, they shouldn't have been here in the first place to see _him_ like this. The door closed behind him and the silence he had been praying for was finally there, only now he filled it with a cry, a frustrated scream that tore at his throat and that he had to lock back in because otherwise the dam around all his thoughts and his hate would break and it would be too much.

Nothing special had happened. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing he wasn't expecting to. Marvin had always been the worst type of swine, the vilest in a pile where rankings hardly seemed to matter or actually exist, and Ash was used to it. Nevermind that he had had to deal with Dino just an hour before it. Nevermind that Marvin had always kept his comments and sneers, his hints and his filthy fucking lust, even if it had been a while since he last had done anything more than grab Ash's arm. He would inevitably grow frustrated, and inevitably the day would come when he'd get a reminder of all the _'good old days'_ even if Ash wasn't as little as he liked or remembered.

Nevermind all that. Ash was used to it, and he expected it to happen. It was always like that, after all. All that lust, always blaming it on him, how he _wanted_ it. It was just more of the same.

Today, it was simply too much.

He didn't care anymore.

Right now, it was simply too much. He didn't care, it all just felt like too much and the only thing blaring and controlling his mind right now was the need to shut down. No washing, no undressing, no nothing except falling into bed and not wake up again. He even forgot how the nightmares would take over then. Right now, it was simply too much and he couldn't hold on anymore.

He barely looked down at the unmade bed, bedsheets on a pile for laundry and pillow scattered on a side. The very thought of grabbing some sheets and snapping them over the mattress felt like the most hardeous and useless thing in the world to do. It'd be too much. He was too tired. Ash didn't even take off his shoes, simply sank into the rough mattress fully clothed, dusty and gross and tainted as everything on him was, shoving his head into the pillow and feeling every bit of exhaustion as needles in his eyes and a tonful of weight on his body. A part of him tried to tell him how gross he was, how even basic human hygiene had been something he rejected, didn't deem worthy of himself, but Ash shut it down.

It was the exhaustion that managed to push him to sleep just minutes after he dropped into the bed. It was a short, restless sleep, filled with images that danced the thin line between nightmares and memories, brought back not from what had just happened hours prior but instead awaken by his body directly grazing against the bare rough mattress under him, forcing his mind into other times and places without any restriction, into backalley hostels and inns where he'd be shoved into, or begrudgingly walked into, where he'd be pushed face down into the rough coarse fabric of a mattress just like this one over and over and over again, all the sweat and drool seeped into the mattress overwhelming him and all the dust and filth coating his mouth as he screamed against it.

He was quick to push himself back up, covered in cold sticky sweat and shaking, his throat raspy and hideously dry, his body aching and heavy. He took the usual seconds to fully regain consciousness of where he was and where he was not, what was reality and what was a nightmare, even though, at times like this, it was harder to distinguish one from the other. Through his panting, Ash tried to swallow and breathe, steady down his heart and his stupid mind, but it was his own fault; of course he should have expected it, should have known it would happen. If anything, he had only helped increase every single stimuli around him. Both in nightmares and reality, it was always,_ again,_ his own fault for making things happen and making them worst.

Ash's eyes dropped down at this body, the bare mattress beneath him, fighting the shudders that wanted to break him and losing against them. He felt the weight of his bladder too, screaming, and that'd be just what he needed, right? Pissing himself on the bed like a little scared kid - oh how that fucking pig Marvin would have loved that, how he loved it, how all of them loved to use him and break him like the human waste that he was. Gritting his teeth against screaming, he sank his fingers on his hair and pulled, hard. The tears that gathered on his eyes were not from the pain though, so he kept pulling until they were, until they streamed down his face and he was reduced to gasps and pants and sobs.

The thought of Griffin crossed his mind suddenly, another nail hammering his tears down, but he only barely gazed at the closed door. The fear and guilt of his brother hearing his wailing on the other side of that door were fast to turn into tired indifference. His pathetic sobbing now wouldn't surely be louder than his earlier screams, or more anguished than all his previous pleading for him to come back, to talk, to hear, to protect him again. It would only reach deaf ears.

He forced himself up and dragged himself to the toilet, fighting the hint of his reflection on the mirror on the corner of his eye, doing what he had to do and quickly returning to the bedroom. He only realized how cold he was when he looked at the scattered white duvet over a chair, and he picked it and wrapped it around himself before sinking head first again in the bed. It took him a lot longer to fall back asleep again.

The next time he woke up, it was because of a loud knocking (or banging, most likely) and a familiar, very low and muffled voice that almost worked for Ash to groan against the pillow and frown in an usual, bad morning temper. Then he considered ignoring it, letting it lull him back to some semblance of rest because his body hadn't recovered yet, he was more tired than before, but for all the qualities Shorter might have, he made up for them being stubborn as fucking_ hell_. So when the knocking escalated past the reasonable and plausible, Ash stood up and prepared to throw whatever his hands got a hold on first.

Thankfully for Shorter, that happened to be his sweat and drool-coated pillow, which hit him square in the face. The teen's greeting was therefore interrupted, his sunglasses flying and a yelp muffled by the pillow, and when he shook the slight dizziness off and picked the strangely intact glasses, he turned to Ash with a serious expression, made heavier by actually revealing his eyes.

"You look like shit, man."

"Fuck you, Shorter."

He tried to throw the door shut before turning back, but he knew Shorter had grabbed it and instead closed it soundlessly. Ash threw himself back on the bed, a coccoon of duvet around him.

"You just slept there like that?" Shorter asked, more thinking outloud than actually speaking to Ash, it seemed. "Hey. Ash. Talk to me. I'm... I'm sorry for yesterday. Skip didn't do anything wrong. He only left to buy some food on this joint just next door and I was walking past. I know this your place and I shouldn't be here. Don't blame it on the kid."

"I'm not stupid," Ash replied against the covers. He knew Skipper wasn't to blame; Ash _had been_ late, way beyond what they had agreed upon, even if it _wasn't his own fault_ for that. It still didn't mean he liked Shorter knowing about this place, this one place, but it was just another thing out of his control.

"Ash. Get up, man. You need to shower. You need to rest, properly. How did you sleep like that?"

His bad humor was rapidly vanishing, just like adrenaline, leaving him scarred and ragged and more exhausted than before. Almost enough for him to listen to Shorter, to let the other teen guide him with words Ash would otherwise ignore if they came from his own mind. But Shorter was stubborn, more so than Ash. His persistency drove Ash out of the coccoon, out of the bed, into the bathroom and with orders to 'put on his jammies' afterwards. The tshirt Shorter quickly scavanged from Ash's wardrobe was no pajamas, but he wasn't really going to argue about that now.

Alone and with the door firmly shut by Shorter, Ash had no way to avoid the mirror in front of him now, and his face stared him from the other side, swollen from poor sleep and with dark purpleish bags under those bright eyes, making them stand out sickeningly. His hair was a mess, the dried sweat slowly creeping into his senses and reawakening every single trace of filth on his body and making him feel like he was burning.

He ripped his clothes out of his body, shoving them to a pile on the floor, seeing the bruises first on his skin then through his reflection, getting into the shower and turning on the hot water until it burned away everything else.

Slowly, as if the scorching water was pumping resolve into his veins, he washed and rubbed and scrabbed until it became a bit easier to breathe. He dried his skin and put on the clothes Shorter had thrown at him, and then turned back into the mirror. Still tattered, still ragged and broken, but picking up the pieces again.

When he got out, the bed was neatly made with fresh sheets and his duvet had been replaced with a finner quilt, but one that wasn't dipped in sweat and with the stench of the night. Shorter was sitting on a chair, his sunglasses resting on the top of his head and pushing down a part of his mohawk.

"See? Much better."

Ash didn't reply. Shorter didn't say anything else for a while either, looking at Ash in a way that didn't make him feel uncomfortable, not exactly, even though it wasn't familiar, it wasn't the hunger and lust Ash knew to expect, not filthy like that at least. He didn't touch Ash, didn't stand up, didn't ask questions he probably wanted to. Or maybe he didn't want; he knew things without Ash ever needing to elaborate more than a few words. He had seen it in juvie. The words that did end up coming out were:

"Will you be alright?"

Ash replied without thinking, a reflex more than an actual answer. Shorter nodded.

"Is there anything else you need?"

"Take care of things today for me."

"Of course."

"And tell Skip I'm sorry."

"I'll tell him you want to talk with him."

Shorter remained there for a little while longer until he realized Ash wasn't going to lay down until he was alone. He quickly shuffled back up and wished him good night (at eleven AM) and closed the door softly on his way out. Ash didn't thank him, although he knew he should have, but such words could not come out of the mouth of someone like him, someone as vile as him.

He really wished he could, though. The feeling of the bed was so strikingly different now it almost seemed comical, unreal. It seemed to embrace him now instead of piercing him, the warmth of the sheets and the quilt more comforting than the heavier duvet could ever hope to be. For this, for people like Shorter and Skipper, who for some outrageous reason seemed to try to care for him, Ash almost wished he could be different. That he could be able to understand this and let it control him in the same fashion his hatred and despair had controlled him the night before, that he could let them actually care instead of pushing them away so they wouldn't try.

Someday, maybe.

For now, he would be alright. He always did. It was just more of the same.

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the end

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Author's Note: Prompted by a dreadful night followed by nightmares I should be expecting. Written to Darkest Hour's "Veritas Aequitas".

Thanks for reading, feedback is appreciated.


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